Reducing Healthcare Costs Through a Corporate Wellness Program

1. Reducing Healthcare Costs Through a Corporate Wellness Program

2. Businesses throughout America have struggled for years with the continuous increasing costs of healthcare.

3. According to the National Coalition on Healthcare: The costs of healthcare premiums have increased 5 times faster on average than the earnings of workers since the year 2000. The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Employee Health Benefits: 2006 Annual Survey. 26 September 2006. http://www.kff.org/insurance/7315/index.cfm

4. The NCHC also notes that in 2005, “Employer health insurance premiums increased by 9.2%, nearly three times the rate of inflation.”  Source: National Coalition on Healthcare Cost, “Health Insurance Cost”, http://www.nchc.org/

5. Corporate America is finally recognizing that it is their profits being lost due to employee illness and injury, and that to help their bottom line they can and must take action to improve their employee’s health.

6. There are two approaches to reducing healthcare costs: Shop for less expensive coverage. Reduce the risk of illness and injury.

7. Today I would like to introduce to you a cutting-edge solution to your healthcare costs that will increase your profits and employee production while reducing absenteeism and workers’ compensation claims.

8. More than 80% of disease and illness can be traced to three contributing factors.

9. These three factors are: • Being overweight • Unmanaged stress • Repetitive motion disorders.

10. The good news is that all three of these factors can be addressed to reduce healthcare costs.

11. Once again, the results would be improved employee productivity, less absenteeism, fewer workers’ comp claims and reduced medical costs.

12. Let’s look more closely at these three factors and what they mean to your business. We will then show you our proposed solution.

13. First, let’s look at what having overweight employees is costing you, versus providing your employees a workable weight loss program.

14. The National Business Group on Health, a Washington, DC based, non-profit organization which represents larger companies, estimated that obesity costs companies 8 billion dollars for added health insurance, 2.4 billion for sick leave, 1.8 billion for life insurance and 1 billion for disability insurance. Source: National Business Group, http://www.businessgrouphealth.org/index.cfm

15. Now, these numbers do not reflect the 50% of your work force that are overweight, not obese. Taking this into account the numbers would likely more than double. Over weight & Obese Over weight Obese

16. The Center for Disease Control notes that being overweight increases the risk of many diseases and health conditions including: high blood pressure, high total cholesterol or triglycerides, Type 2 Diabetes, heart disease, stroke, gall bladder disease, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea, respiratory problems and some cancers (endometrial, breast and colon). Source: Center for Disease Control, Overweight and Obesity: Home, http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/

17. In October 2006, Adam Gilden Tsai, Instructor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, further refined the financial costs associated with being overweight to a per person charge. He found that the average person who is overweight accounts for an additional $1,034 every year in doctor visits, medications and medical procedures. Source: Knowledge at Wharton, Efforts are Growing to Trim the Fat From Employees - and Employers’ Health Care Costs, Nov. 01, 2006.

18. According to Jean Lemaier, Wharton Professor of Insurance, Americans are much heavier than they were 10 years ago. She further found that life expectancy in the U.S. only ranks 48th in the world, despite the wealth of our country. Source: Knowledge at Wharton, Efforts are Growing to Trim the Fat From Employees - and Employers’ Health Care Costs, Nov. 01, 2006.

19. The program we have found to be the most effective is one that addresses the cause of weight gain as well as the difficulties related to losing weight.

20. This program works 90% of the time and does not require exercise.

21. It is extremely effective because it provides rapid, sustainable weight loss, without starving, over a 9-11 day period.

22. It is based on the concept that our population is overweight, in part, due to the 82,000 chemicals in our air, food and water that the body stores in our fat cells. Source: The Pollution Within By David Ewing Duncan, http://www.nationalgeographic.com.

23. OUR AIR According to the World Book Encyclopedia, more than 2.4 billion pounds of air pollution went into the air in the U.S in 1989 alone. It has only gotten worse. Source: McGowin, A., “Environmental Pollution,” World Book Encyclopedia, 6, pp.330-340,1993.

24. OUR FOOD In the book What You Don’t Know May Be Killing You, author Don Colbert, M.D., discovered there are over 3000 chemicals and 10,000 solvents, emulsifiers (used to stabilize processed foods) and preservatives in our food. Source: What You Don’t Know May Be Killing You by Dr. Don Colbert, MD

25. OUR WATER According to the World Book Encyclopedia, a study was done which found 188 million pounds of chemicals were discharged into our lakes, streams and rivers. McGowin, A., "Environmental Pollution," World Book Encyclopedia, 6, pp.330-340,1993.

26. The result of all these chemical impurities has been that the filters of the body get filled and cannot function. The two major filters of the body are your liver and kidneys. Source: What You Don’t Know May Be Killing You by Dr. Don Colbert, MD

27. Traditional Diet vs. Cleansing One of the ways the liver deals with impurities is to increase body fat to enfold these impurities and to protect the body from their influence. Diets are not successful for long term weight loss because they don’t address the need to cleanse the body of impurities.

30. The first major company to use this program had their 5 top executives lose a total of 142 pounds with an average of 29.6 pounds per person.

32. “In the first 9 days I lost 9 pounds and 17 inches. In 28 days I have lost 25 pounds and 32 inches.” Jennifer L.

33. Dr. Phil Barone lost an amazing 103 pounds and 50 total inches so far! Before After

34. Our organization would provide this weight loss method to your employees as part of an overall program. The cost per employee would be under $195 for the products and our coaching. Your company could share in this expense as an incentive for your employees or not.

35. This solution to weight loss would be easier than what Sprint Network Corp. did. They spent the money to install parking lots further from their buildings and removed elevators to make their employees walk more to lose weight! Source: Business Week, More Micro, Less Soft, http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_48/b4011063.htm?chan=search

36. It would also be less expensive than the program Microsoft offers, which provides 80% of their employee weight loss costs up to $6,000. Cecily Hall, Microsoft’s Director of U.S. Benefits says the company has already made a one-to-one return on their investment since the program’s inception in 2002. Source: Business Week, “More Micro, Less Soft”, http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_48/b4011063.htm?chan=search

37. Our program costs a lot less than $6000 per employee.

38. The second area our wellness program would address is the negative effect stress has on one’s health.

39. According to Dr. Han Selye’s breakthrough book, Stress Without Distress, stress and distress destroys the body by causing the over production of adrenal gland hormones.

40. Stress and the Immune System The National Institute of Health (NIH) reported in October 2000, that if you’re chronically stressed, the part of the brain that controls the adrenal glands will cause a constant release of hormones. The immune cells are bathed in molecules that are essentially telling them to stop fighting, which then reduces resistance to disease. And so, in situations of chronic stress, immune cells are less able to respond to an invader like bacteria or a virus. Source: The NIH Word on Health, October 2000, http://www.nih.gov/news/WordonHealth/oct2000/story01.htm

41. In a stressful situation the digestive tract and the immune system temporarily halt their functions to allow for the immediate and urgent problem to be resolved.

42. What happens if stress continues in a person’s life and is not the result of a rare situation, but rather the continuous stress of money, marriage, and work, etc.? The answer is a loss of normal digestion, a lowering of immunity and added stress on the heart. Continued stress equals absenteeism, lost productivity and increased healthcare costs.